by Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

by Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

Parkland attempts to recount the four days surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. That's a tall task, and in casting such a wide net, the film leaves quite a few gaps.

The events of those days would have been better covered in greater depth in a miniseries, rather than a 90-minute movie (** 1/2 out of four; rated PG-13; opens Friday in select cities).

The title refers to the hospital where Kennedy was taken immediately after being shot on Nov. 22, 1963. It was also the place where his purported assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was taken when he was shot by Jack Ruby.

Lacking a central character, the film follows a host of players. They include Parkland's ER physician Dr. Jim Carrico (Zac Efron), nurse Doris Nelson (Marcia Gay Harden) and chief resident Dr. Malcolm Perry (Colin Hanks), who work to resuscitate both men. But the story doesn't offer enough insight into what these medical personnel personally experienced.

Parkland follows the saga of Abraham Zapruder(Paul Giamatti), who shot the famous footage of the president as he was shot, but skirts over the surface, focusing on the mad scramble for the film by media outlets and federal officials, led by Forrest Sorrels (Billy Bob Thornton).

It traces the reaction of Robert Oswald (James Badge Dale) and his maddeningly vague jailhouse meeting with his brother Lee (Jeremy Strong). Their seemingly benighted and narcissistic mother Marguerite Oswald(Jacki Weaver) is one of the film's most intriguing characters. She's bizarrely happy for the reflected publicity. Details such as this stand out in the too-cluttered chronicle of events.

Also intriguing is the way the local medical examiner initially insisted on keeping the president's body in Dallas for jurisdictional reasons. He was angrily overruled by a host of White House officials.

The film glances over FBI agent James Hosty (Ron Livingston), who had been investigating Oswald. It touches on the reactions of Secret Service men who had never had a president die on their watch.

Though well-intentioned, Parkland is frustrating. Nothing truly revelatory comes from the coverage of these tragic days. It studiously ignores any conspiratorial angles. That deliberate choice can be defended, but less defensible is the way it chronicles events without offering much connective tissue.

The depiction of a mute Jackie Kennedy kissing her husband's dead body in her blood-stained pink suit is the most powerful image. The viewer is struck by how alone she appears, with no assistants or aides nearby.

The film, based on Vincent Bugliosi's book Four Days in November, inexplicably leaves out some key events. Lyndon Johnson's swearing in is covered, but Ruby's shooting of Oswald is not depicted.

Perhaps it was simply a too-ambitious task. If director Peter Landesman had chosen simply one or two elements to focus on - Zapruder, the Oswald family, Jackie Kennedy- it would have been a more moving account. Individual performances are strong, but no one is given enough screen time to make enough impact.

Attempting to cover so many pieces of the puzzle with its scattershot focus only dilutes the potency of one of our most compelling and tragic historical events.